i work in the deli, right now I am acting deli mgr. My problem is we have 4 women in the deli who take it as their life goal to remove people. What I mean is they collectively find someone they don't like and they watch this person every day they work and write down what they do wrong in any given minute. If "chosen one" is talking to mary for 5 mins about her dog, they write down that chosen one was talking about personal issues for 10 minutes, nothing about mary.
They have gone thru 3 people in about 6 months. They pick one person, document everything. (they only made regular, bbq, and rot cold chicken, they didn't make spicy cold chicken that day, they made 8 chicken sands but ran out before they had more out there, they didn't clean the donut case like they should have)
They go until management removes that person to cashier or fires them, they then move on to another person. They all have the thought process that no one works as hard as they do, Everyone else is a waste of company time.
My question, I've thought of becoming the bad guy myself. It seems that they require someone to hate in order for them to all get along. Maybe if I come in and just be the bad guy, let them hate me, they can get along long enough to work together? Or is there another way to handle these "mean girls" and yes I swear it's like I'm watching the plastics 30 years later.
Any advice would be awesome. Right now they are currently trying to get a 67 year old woman who has worked in the deli for 6 years fired, or moved to cashier because she is the reason that we can't get any work done. She stands around too much, and doesn't like her job.
worked under those conditions, most of my 12 years. always some busy body, tryng to knock me off. finally, one got lucky, and this one , i called friend ! kroger managemnt likes, and encourages this kind of 'watch dogging", makes their job easier. piont being, there is nothing you can do, but cover your rear as best you can, because trust me, the union will not help,. when the ax drops
I really don't consider my "career" with Kroger a problem.. I don't see a future with them. they work for now. But I don't see how it's fair to remove someone from their job just because these "mean girls" feel like they are better than everyone else. This older woman basically works 20 hours a week for her insurance.
You don't have to be the bad guy and have them focus on you to torment. But, you could be a good guy and let management know what the busy bodies are doing and stand up for the people they are watch dogging. Like Em said, "If they are doing their job, how do they have time to watch and document everyone else?"
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Quote from the Boss: I didn't say it was your fault. I said I was going to blame it on you.
that's what I'm doing right now. Just worried about it because I'm on vacation this week and one of the mean girls is my backup.
Side note.. they havn't chosen a deli manager yet, it's between me and my acting backup. God help us if she gets it. But I'll still stand up for anyone in that deli no matter what. To make it slightly more complicated, one of the other mean girls is our shop steward.
I sometimes think this isn't even a battle I have the energy to try to win. Let them get everyone but them fired, or moved to another dept. But then I think why should they get their way? (vindictive and bitter thoughts I know)
far as management is conserned, these people ARE doing their job, weeding out people.ussually such people are so far up management's rears, they could do no wrong. it's the ones that run around and complain about others, thats do the least work. thats why they do it, draws attaention away from their short comings
Get your shop steward or union rep. go to the manager and tell them you are being harrassed and that these co-workers are causing a hostile working environment. make sure to use hassassment and hostile working environment these words will make management understand you mean business then tell the manager what happen, they have made your case pretty easy. Running off 3 people one after another using the same trick shows a pattern. In my district you can't file harrassment against another union employee so that harrassment charge is on your store manager. I would tell you to start documenting also just to be safe, but here is how you get them, document everybody in the department the people giving you problems and the other people in the department ,good and bad things. At the end of the day it will set up a battle and they will whip out all this documentation showing how bad an employee you are and all this bad stuff you have done or not done.Then produce your documentation showing what everybody in dept. has done good and bad and say this is what really goes on. The difference between the documentation is they only choose you , why only you? Your documentation should show everybody open and honest, good and bad, even throw in a good thing or too about your problem people if that's possible. Make sure to document everybody(I know this is a pain) even the good employees
I have seen a department head try to get a so called bad employee out of his department by writing down every time he walked off and took too long on a break he documented everything, he thought he had this employee nailed. At the final battle between these 2 the so called stupid bad employee told the manager see I told you I was being harrassed. The department head was like what are you talking about and the employee said why did you not document everybody in the department why just me? The employee said thats discrimination and harrassment. Then the employee whipped out detailed documentation on everybody in the department the deptment head and all, good and bad. Really embarrassed the department head with the attention to detail.So if you are going against the mean girls, beat them at their own game just make sure you are better at it. This documentation game sucks and is no fun and things should never come to this, but a lot of things shouldn't happen inside the store should they?.
So far things are working out a bit better because I'm now the dept head. The mean girls are striving to get on my good side. The union steward is one of the mean girls. I actually talked to management and they said that they were honestly quite tired of the rumors and backstabbing. If anyone else comes to them with a list of things someone does wrong, it will be considered harrassment and the person with the list will be suspended pending investigation.
I think it just took a year to get to this point, but meanwhile we lost 6 employees that management were trusting the mean girls over. They just assumed that the union steward and senior emplloyees would have the stores best interest at heart. I think now they are seeing what they really are.
I honestly can't wait for one of the mean girls to go upstairs with another list.
thanks for the ideas though, for once it might work out well.
